Library to screen ‘First Language’

A screening of the documentary “First Language: The Race to Save Cherokee” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 28, at the Jackson County Public Library in Sylva.

“First Language: The Race to Save Cherokee” is a documentary film about current efforts to revitalize the Cherokee language, a vessel of knowledge and identity for the Cherokee people. This film won the Best Public Service award at the 2014 American Indian Film Festival. The panel immediately following the movie will be made up of Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, the executive director of The Cherokee Preservation Foundation; Dr. Hartwell Francis, director of the Cherokee Language Program at WCU; Tom Belt, the Cherokee Language Program Coordinator; and possibly more.

This event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Jackson County Public Library.

This Must Be the Place

It was five years ago today (Aug. 10) when I moved from Upstate New York to start a new life at The Smoky Mountain News in Waynesville. Whatever didn’t fit into the back of my small, old pickup truck didn’t go with me to Western North Carolina. Boxes of books, clothes, vinyl records, and my mountain bike. That was it, with the back of the truck lower than the front end due to the excess weight.

Reading Room

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality ... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. “I’m not a race. I’m a person.” That…